How to set up an optimised Facebook Ads campaign?

One of the main qualities of Print on Demand is that this sales mechanism does not require any initial investment on the part of the entrepreneur. This is especially true of our free platform, where we do not ask you for any subscription, but really, zero, nada, niet. You are only charged for processing an order (printing + shipping). This does not necessarily mean that your POD adventure will be all profit and no expense: some investments will be extremely beneficial to the health of your business in the long run. This is the case, for example, with the advertising campaigns that can now be set up on social networks, and more particularly with Facebook Ads.

Facebook Ads is becoming an increasingly recognised benchmark in the online advertising industry, not least because of its ease of use combined with reasonable rates and reach. There are currently 2.45 billion active users on the social network per month: 2.45 billion people likely to see and click on your ad. Quite impressive, in our humble opinion. To top it off, these users are generally receptive to the platform's advertising content, clicking on an average of eight ads per month. It would be a shame to lose the attention of such a large audience, wouldn't it?

Despite its accessibility, you need to have some prior knowledge to master the Facebook Ads platform, and since we're super nice (AND modest), we've decided to provide you with our best tips to make your next campaigns successful. Let's get started!

How to optimise your Facebook Ads campaign

1 / Define your objective meticulously

This step is THE moment of truth in setting up your campaign: defining what made you consider advertising to promote your business. Facebook Ads offers you several types of objectives:

• The awareness objective : your aim is to make as many people as possible aware of your business. This objective will be most relevant if you are running a local business or organisation.
• The objective of consideration : you want to increase traffic on one of your web pages or encourage interaction from the public.
• The conversion objective : you want to encourage visitors to your website or application to take action (whether this action is a purchase, a form to fill in, etc.).

In any case, there is always a concrete reason behind the decision to launch an advertising campaign. Don't hesitate to take a moment to think about what you would like to see as a result of your campaign: setting a relevant objective is a solid basis for effective promotion.

2 / Install your pixel

Have you ever dreamed of having a spy at your service? Probably. That's exactly the job of the pixel, which can be installed on your Facebook Business ad space. It is literally an invisible pixel (1x1px) that you can install on a given page of your website. Its purpose is to analyse the actions carried out on the page by your visitors, in order to compare your number of visitors with the engagement generated by this page. This tool is optional but very useful, especially as it allows the use of two types of audience: firstly, the personalised audience, which is based on the traffic of your website previously recorded by the pixel and makes your campaign a "retargeting" campaign of existing visitors. Secondly, it allows you to use a "similar audience", with similar characteristics to your existing visitors.

Are you convinced and want to install your pixel? Follow the instructions on this page.

3 / Choose an appropriate audience

When you first encounter the Facebook Ads platform, you will probably be surprised by the many criteria that can be entered to refine the definition of the audience for your ad. Facebook distinguishes three different types of audience:

• The main audience : Do you want to target women over 45, unmarried and who love bouillabaisse? This is entirely possible, you will just have to fill in all these elements when you design your main audience (before creating your campaign). Facebook Ads gives you some pretty impressive targeting options, with criteria ranging from age to interests to marital status.
• Custom Audience: Interesting if you have the pixel in place that we mentioned earlier, the custom audience is a group of users who have already interacted with your brand (by visiting your online shop, for example).
• Similar audience: If you already have a community and want to grow it, Facebook's similar audience should be a good choice for your campaign. By pre-installing a pixel on the web page of your choice, your ad will reach an audience with similar tastes and characteristics to those who have already visited your page.

Although it may seem limiting at first, we can assure you that accurately defining an audience will quickly prove beneficial to your campaign. For a message to be relevant and therefore really taken into account, it is necessary that it is adapted to its audience.

A little trick to increase the reach of your audience while remaining consistent: Facebook has recently made available an option to be checked when creating your audience called "Extended Targeting". This option makes it possible to distribute your content more widely to an audience similar to the one you are targeting.

4 / Plan your budget

Put on your glasses, grab your calculator and focus: it's time to work out your advertising budget. Although you probably don't feel very happy about it, this step is absolutely essential to the success of your campaign. I promise, it's worth it.

You will see that Facebook Ads offers two possibilities: the daily budget and the total budget. It's up to you to decide which configuration best suits your campaign goal. If this is one of your first campaigns, it is generally advisable to start with a low daily budget (e.g. €10 per day). This will allow you to see what works and what doesn't at a lower cost, and then adjust your campaign budget based on these initial results.

5 / Take care of your visual

It is essential, it is at the heart of your message, it is the main actor of your advertising: it is, of course, your visual. We can tell you that there is probably nothing more important in the development of your advertisement than the choice of the visual. It is the first stop for your audience's eyes before deciding, based on that first impression, whether they are interested in the rest of your publication. Prefer high-quality content, with vivid colors and a clear meaning, with an obvious link to the accompanying text. Conversely, avoid stock photos or videos that are too impersonal, or poor quality visuals.

Are you having trouble imagining what would be beneficial to use to illustrate your ad? Recently, in the interest of transparency, Facebook has set up an ad library where you can view the active campaigns on the page of your choice. This is a real goldmine if you want to find out what the competition is doing.

6 / Choose the right format

Facebook Ads offers three different types of formats: the photo or video alone, the Carousel (a set of photos or videos to scroll through) and the product collection (product thumbnails to scroll through, allowing direct access to the product in question). Make your choice by taking into account the objective of your campaign: the first format is suitable for all types of objectives, the second is ideal if you wish to highlight a range of products or services and, finally, the last will be appropriate only if you wish to increase your conversion rate (i.e. the ratio between your views and your sales)

7 / Keep the text short and to the point

After the visual, the text is the second element that will catch the consumer's eye. This text can be divided into 3 distinct categories:

• The title : Will appear just below your illustration as a clickable link. Limit of 25 characters.
• The description: Appears just below the title and describes the link presented. Limit of 30 characters.
• The text : This is the main text of the publication, it accompanies the title/description. Limit of 90 characters.

The second role of your campaign is the influence of the text, which can confirm or deny the first impression given by your visual. It's time to give it your all! Yes, everything, even as much as this little cat:

Since Facebook does not consider it effective to show an ad with text that covers more than 20% of the post, each field has its own limit that you will have to respect, or else your text will end up truncated (users will have to click on "See more" to be able to read the whole text). So be very relevant and effective with a short but intense text. The little extra? Stand out from the crowd and provide consumers with high value-added content such as recipes, tips, lists, tops, etc. For example, if your catalogue includes mugs, share the best mug cake or hot drink recipe you know. If you are publishing your campaign for the festive season, posting an advert in the form of "top products from your range that would make perfect gifts" could be a good idea. Keep in mind that users see a huge number of campaigns every day and are becoming increasingly immune to advertising pitches, so it's important to offer them refreshing content that is both interesting and confirms your legitimacy.

8 / Design a suitable landing page

Once again, we are advocating relevance, this time with the landing page , the link that you will insert into the heart of your ad. Ideally, you should choose a page that is most relevant to the context of your illustration and text. Visitors' attention is fleeting: they may not bother to click a second time if they do not find their happiness directly on your landing page. So make sure you choose a perfectly appropriate landing page; for example, if your advert is about your autumnal products, it makes the most sense to link to the product category page in question.

Great, you now have a great set of tips for building a consistent and effective advertising campaign. You want to apply them: the only problem is that you don't know how to create a Facebook Ads campaign... No problem, we're on it.

Step 1: Start by setting up your Facebook Business account. Useful and free, this suite created by Facebook centralizes the management of your business pages and your advertising campaigns. To run a Facebook Ads campaign, you will need to have access to Facebook Business and then add an advertising account (go to the business settings, then to the "Accounts" category, then to "Advertising accounts"; finally, click on "Add").

Step 2: Go to the "Ads" tab in your Facebook Business Suite. Then click on the "Create an Ad" button.

Step 3: In its form, Facebook first asks you to select your goal. If you're a good student and have applied our first tip, you should have made your choice between an awareness, consideration or conversion goal.

Step 4: Fill in your campaign budget.

Step 5: Choose the type of placement in your audience feeds: automatic or visual (i.e. manually selected by you)? Since you are probably a novice, we advise you not to complicate your life and to check the first option.

Step 6: Facebook Ads requires you to fill in the format you've chosen for your ad, whether it's a photo, video, product collection or carousel. It's up to you!

Step 7: The decisive moment has arrived: it's time to add the multimedia content, the title, the description and eventually the Call to Action (call to engagement) that will appear as a clickable button.

Step 8: Inhale, exhale, then click "Publish". And that's it... You are officially the creator of a Facebook ad campaign. You can be proud of yourself: at least, we are.

Unstoppable: that's the adjective that comes to mind when you consider the number of years that Facebook has held the position of the social network with the most active users in the world. Knowing that Facebook users tend to be receptive to the ads they see on the network... It seems to us that it would be a shame not to try to get noticed, right? Go ahead and join the 24.2% of Facebook pages that use advertising, something tells us you won't regret it...

Statistical sources: Hootsuite